The Breakthrough Experience

The Breakthrough Experience: A Revolutionary New Approach to Personal Transformation by John Demartini, a world famous human behavior specialist and educator – and one of the teachers from The Secret – was publish in 2002. It’s a book about breaking through the barriers that keep us from experiencing our true nature as light.

Summary and Chapters

On the official page of Dr. Demartini, the book is described as real and practical manual for understanding why you live the way you do, and how to transform your life into your highest vision:

You’ll learn a formula to manifest your dreams, discover the secrets of opening your heart beyond anything you’ve ever imagined, receive profound insights on how to create more fulfilling and caring relationships, reawaken your birthright and a true genius, transcend the fears and illusions surrounding the myth of death, and reconnect with your true mission and purpose on Earth.

In the Introduction, the author announces that in the book the reader will learn a formula for materializing his or her dreams.

Chapter 1: The Essence of Life – explaining how everyone wants to love and be loved, to appreciate and be appreciated, and everyone wants to live his or her dreams. The essence of life are love and wisdom.

Science and religion – the author say that “we’ve never come across anything more magnificent than the human body, brain, and spirit”, which is divine perfection.

Gratitude is the Key – according to the author, gratitude is the key to growth and fulfillment. He defines gratitude as “a quiet state of poise and inner calm where you’re truly thankful, where you sense the divine order and wouldn’t want anything to change.”

My First Mentor – he talks about a yoga teacher, Paul Bragg, who inspired him to breakthrough his perceived limitations.

Divine Order – explaining how everything that happens is a vital part of the divine order, and that even the most terrible events always contain hidden blessings.

The Great Discovery – the Great Discovery is that “at any moment of your life, you will never be put down without being lifted up, nor lifted up without being put down. Positive and negative, good and bad, support and challenge, peace and war—all come together in pairs. They are simultaneous and perfectly balanced, and that is what makes up the divine order.”

True Love – explaining how true love is made up of two sides: support and challenge, and nature won’t allow anything but equilibrium. When you embrace the balance and the truth, love surrounds you.

The Master Dance – we shouldn’t see anything in our life as an attack on us, because: “If we can understand and embrace everything that comes our way, in the same spirit as this gentleman, knowing that it is not an attack, but an opportunity to refine and expand ourselves, we can turn our lives into the same masterful dance.”

Exercise 1 – deeply understand the great truth that love is two-sided.

Exercise 2 – remember everyone who helped you today, and go to sleep with a grateful, open heart.

Chapter 2: Lighten Up – this chapter is about how to access the infinite energy by recognizing and attuning with your Divine Source.

Recurring Themes – “No universe with intelligence is pointless…intelligence could persist for eternity—perhaps in the form of a cloud of charged particles (of light)—through shrewd conservation of energy.”

Being Here Now – “The past holds memory, is emotionally based, and is dominated by the emotion labeled guilt. The future holds imagination, is also emotionally based, and is dominated by the emotion labeled fear. The loving essence of your true spirit is spaceless and timeless presence. Anytime you experience a future or past emotion, you dissipate your potential energy into a kinetic motion. But in a state of presence and love, you regenerate your kinetic energy and birth a new quantum of creative potential.”

Mothers and Fathers – should know that, when you love, the person becomes present with you, and a true open heart in the presence of the one you love is one of the most profound things you will ever experience.

Tough-Love Science – the author explains how we’re all made of energy, and how the universal laws work: “You are made up of pure vibrating light waves, which physicists call quanta. (…) I’m talking about your being, your physical nature, as vibration. There are laws that govern those vibrations. When you apply those laws, you can understand what happens in life, and understanding is crucial to your illumination experience. (…) All phenomena are universally full-quantum. That implies there must be no such thing as happiness without sadness, or sadness without happiness.”

Mother Love – he returns to the subject of gratitude as the key that opens the gateway of the heart and which makes you present with whatever you’re doing.

Pain and Pleasure – when pain and pleasure are perfectly balanced, both disappear; the funny thing is that pain and pleasure remain perfectly balanced at every moment, but you selectively attend to on side or the other and feel pleasure or pain accordingly.

Turning Lead into Gold – “When you see both particle sides, pleasure and pain equally, the lightbulb turns on. (…) We need that balance of support and challenge, of positive and negative feedback, to grow and evolve.”

The Perfection of Two Sides – in this part, the author explains how all emotions are lies: “When you don’t see the perfection of where you are, you take the pure energy of inspiration and dissipate it in emotional reactions. (…) The truth is love, but emotions are half-truths, distortions, and lies. (…) Love is a perfectly equilibrated, divinely ordained state of consciousness that’s available to you 24 hours a day if you just balance your mind and don’t let it go off on emotional illusions.”

The Bars Are Ours – the lesson is that the heart is more powerful than the intellect in this area.

Exercise 1 – say the affirmation: “No matter what I have done or have not done, I am worthy of love.”

Exercise 2 – look back over your life and identify every single thing that you think was somehow negative, then ask how did that person or experience blessed you and helped you to become who you are today – to imagine what it would be like if you could not see anything else around you but perfect equilibrium.

Chapter 3: Living Dreams – about how we all have a mission for life, and we need to discover it.

My Great Mentor Appears – “I am a genius, and I apply my wisdom.”…say it every single day and never miss a day, until every single cell in your body gets it.

Dreams Come True – when that happens, “every cell in your body, every fragment of your consciousness, will start to harmonize and be with you”.

The Price of Dreams – to be a genius, you must be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your dreams, but there’s always a price. “If you want to excel at something, then let no day go by without dedicating your life 100 percent to making it happen.”

The Dream is in the Detail – if you get absolutely crystal clear on exactly what you would love, and you can’t see anything but that, it’s almost impossible for you not to get it.

Miss Houston – the story about how the best way to do what you love is to love what you’re doing right now.

Secrets of an Inspired Life – living an inspired life requires mastering some skills, and the author explains what they are.

Exercise – create the life you love, and maintain an achievement and blessing journal.

Chapter 4: Both Sides Now – a vital element in living those dreams is the ability to remain centered and balanced, no matter what happens.

Who Do You Think You Are? – “When you stop taking credit and blame, you have the potential to become present, and in that state of presence, you’re capable of what most people call miracles”.

The Healing Power of Presence – when you’re centered, you do not see yourself as separate from divinity or humanity, and you see human will and divine will as one.

Bi-aural Fusion – explaining how our physical senses are bipolar and dualistic, they need some sort of imbalance to function. “Our objective is to discover the underlying perfect symmetry, balanced proportion, and harmonious order, and allow the inner voice to become greater than the outer voices.”

The World is a Mirror – “Everybody has two sides. If you’re honest, you’ll see that you are both saint and sinner, virtuous and vicious. So when someone accuses you of something, don’t waste time defending yourself. Instead, admit that you are in fact possessor of whatever it is they’re attacking you for.”

The Big Prison – everybody deserves to be liberated, but we cannot have free will and freedom until we get beyond our illusions of infatuation and resentment.

Are You Absolutely Positive? – You’re not here to be a one-sided being; positive and negative are the two sides to teach us how to be whole beings.

Never Say Never – you never know how you’ll react until something happens to you. So “when you give yourself permission to be fully human, you approach the divine.”

Exercise 1 – overcome the psychological boundary that thinks anything outside you is not as good as anything inside you.

Exercise 2 – as you improve, you’ll be able to find yourself in anyone and anything.

Chapter 5: Who’s minding the Store? – one of the biggest myths of humankind is the subject of death.

Natural Order – talking about technology and ecology, and ourselves: “In our ignorance, we think that the world is out of balance, and we try to fix anything we’re ignorant about, including ourselves.”

Nothing but Light – everything is ordered by an Intelligence wiser and greater than we can imagine, and nothing is gained or lost, because “there is actually no creation or destruction, just change in form.”

There is no Loss – feelings of grief and remorse are simply forms of uncommunicated love and gratitude.

You Want It? You’ve Got It! – “The instant people realize that they already have what they thought was missing, they’re free, and they understand that they have the power to get it in whatever form they want.”

Four Great Questions – the answers to:

Where have we come from?

Where are we going?

Why are we here?

Who are we?

It’s All about Perspective – we’re going to get everything we need, no matter what we do, so it might as well be in the pursuit of our dream.

The Aging Process – “every time we fail to see the divine order, we age…every time we see the divine order, we become present, and space and time dissolve.”

Exercise – understand that it’s not a matter of if the new forms exist; it’s simply a matter of where they exist, so don’t stop looking until you find them.

Chapter 6: Relationship – explaining how the purpose of all relationships is to dissolve the barriers that keep us apart from recognizing the love that already is, and expressing the love we ultimately have.

700 Hearts – “The only thing that truly satisfies the soul is love and appreciation, and when we feel and express these feelings, we feel fulfilled.”

The Purpose of Marriage – marriage is not about happiness; the purpose of marriage is to teach people how to fully love themselves, their owned and disowned parts.

The 12-Year Itch – a story about an unhappily married man: “He couldn’t appreciate what he presently had as long as he compared it to the fantasy. He wasn’t present; he was living in the past, and that so-called past pleasure and his present pain were a team. (…)He then saw that the negatives and positives were equal, and at that moment, he started appreciating his wife.

Ah, Passion! – evoking the marriage vows: for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, Demartini reminds us that love is not all pleasure, but most people don’t understand until they’ve lived it.

Your Value Systems – we all have a hierarchy of values, which are based on the perception that something is missing, that a void exists; but: “If I don’t honor my wife by knowing her values, and if I don’t know my values and learn how to communicate them in terms of hers, then I don’t know how to care about her.”

Home Rules – each person has their own set of values, and no two people have the same set; you set up rules when your values feel threatened, but the purpose of marriage is to teach us to love the parts we’ve disowned.

The Argument Field – the arguments aren’t bad, they’re telling you that somebody loves you and wants to regulate space, time, energy, and matter with you.

Crisis is a Blessing – “…whatever you repress in the equation of you relationship dynamic, somebody else comes to express.”

Soulmates – the moment you realize you already have everything you’re looking for, the universe gives it to you, including your partner.

Exercise – understand that there are no victims in this world, and that we are all the cause and creators of our own perceptual experience.

Chapter 7: Divinity – “God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought, including being and nonbeing.”

Guru Nanak – “We’re all hypocrites when we say we’re spiritual but don’t sit in a state of gratitude and grace for the magnificence of everything, just as it is…acknowledge the times when we’re not grateful, know that that’s the journey, and humble ourselves to our sacred path of love.”

Going to Heaven – presence is the closest experience we have to divinity.

The Great Artist – we should understand that life truly is a miracle, and miracles don’t happen by chance alone but by laws and intelligence.

There are No Victims – as you’re the author of your own life, and you choose how you’ll perceive it.

I am Worthy of Love – explaining how disease and illness are the signs and symptoms that the body uses to reveal to us where we’re not loving.

Thank you for My Life – “You can live in the past and never get on with the future, and I assure you that anything you don’t love about your past will affect your future.”

Everything Serves – since everything has two sides, you can never have one without the other.

Big Gratitude – the true living spiritual experience occurs when we acknowledge God’s magnificence and grace in presence, love, and gratitude.

The Myth of Forgiveness – forgiveness is a self-righteous illusion, and the truth requires no forgiveness.

Infinite Intelligence – the moment we humble ourselves to the Infinite intelligence, we start to receive the guidance and inspiration that will take us where we’re destined to go, and where we would most love to be.

Exercise – e

xercise your wisdom. Train yourself to instantly equilibrate emotions on a global scale, and the more you do, the more certain you will become about the governing Intelligence that orders life on Earth.

Chapter 8: Genius – explaining that the word genius comes from the Latin root meaning “guardian spirit,” which is exactly what great teachers and immortal thinkers are: creative, guardian spirits who shine light on what seems dark to others.

Seven Levels of Consciousness – Love to (self-actualization), Choose to (self-fulfillment), Desire to (self-esteem), Want to (social), Need to (security), Ought to (survival) and Have to (suicide). These are the verbal expressions of different levels of consciousness.

Fair Exchange – we should strive to be able to change our attitudes and transform our lives.

Seven Levels of the Brain – “You grow from impulse, where you simply react unconsciously to the world, to instinct, where you’re ruled by your emotions; to intellect, where the mind starts to have some awareness of and influence on your destiny. In all of those states, the heart is relatively closed and cannot direct your life. When the heart opens a little, you start to have intuition; and when it opens even further, you get inspiration. Inspiration involves messages, visions, and feelings that show you why you’re here. When the heart is completely open, it can receive divine revelation; and when you receive that, you cannot help but have a profound effect on the world. You will make a difference…”

Living Genius – the story about an extraordinary teacher. “Her certainty exceeded all doubts about their extraordinary and ingenious potential because she taught them as if they already were geniuses, and that’s exactly what they became.”

Seven Areas of Life – you are here on this earth to master seven areas of life: spiritual, mental, vocational, financial, familial, social, and physical. When you supply these areas with love, they become seven sources of power.

The Seven Fears – fear is an illusion that can fragment your full potential. There are seven fears, one for each of the seven areas of life.

The Equilibrating Game – realize that you’ve grown into the next level of chaos and are being given greater challenges because you have greater capacity, and make the embracing of new challenges your goal, because that’s the secret of evolution. “Every moment we spend not focused on our dreams becomes a moment we spend focused on our doubts and obstacles.”

Exercise – put your mind into the great works of genius.

Chapter 9: The Quantum Collapse Process – Demartini explains how there’s an unbound potential energy, unfathomable to the normal mind, but available to those whose spirit is in a state of grace.

Step 1 – every Collapse is really a self-collapse at heart, because whatever you see out there is you. We don’t love other people for their sake; we love them for our own.

Step 3 – you have the same trait as the other person, it’s just a matter of owning your positive disowned parts, and owning your negative disowned parts.

Step 4 – dissolve any admiration or infatuation toward this trait…see that the benefits and drawbacks are perfectly balanced and this trait no longer runs you.

Additional Questions – “

what is still in the way of me loving this person?” – the more you become present about them, and the more love and gratitude you feel, the more they will tune in to you and think of you, contact you, or transform in some way.

Chapter 10: Conception: Believing is Seeing – if you want to achieve self-mastery, you must ask the questions and get the details to master your life or you won’t build it.

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail – in the creation process, you have a balance between making things happen and letting things happen.

Flexibility – be aware that your list of visions and loves isn’t set in stone.

Vision is Life – the author recommends that when you write your Love List, you include short-term goals that are specific, detailed, and that can be easily accomplished; long-term goals that are possibly a little less clear but will be revealed as you go along; and visions for your entire life.

The Slinky Principle – if your plan is detailed enough, you’ll draw in the people who will help make it happen.

Soul Seeds – you should write down your dreams every single day, to read and visualize and affirm them, to focus on and feel called to them. “Fill your mind and days with those dreams, and they’ll become your life.”

Setting your Own Course – a genius is one who is willing to define and refine their dream, and keep acting on high priority actions to fulfill it.

Your Love List – making your list, but be aware that “i

f you don’t act, you’re just writing empty words.”

Chapter 11: Materialization: the Blueprint of Creation – “Your purpose is the “why” that draws to you the “hows” in order for your “whats” to come true.”

Being, Doing and Having – you should become awakened to others and your own hidden agendas, as a way to maintain presence is simultaneous fair exchange.

Feel what you would love…The four most powerful creative feelings are gratitude, love, inspiration, and enthusiasm.

Write what you would love

Act on what you would love…Seven Quality Questions of Self-Actualization…Your objective is to make your avocation your vocation.
a) What would I absolutely love to do in this life?
b) How do I become handsomely or beautifully paid for it?
c) What are the seven highest-priority action steps I could complete today that would enable me to begin doing what I love?
d) What obstacles might I run into and how do I solve them in advance?
e) What worked and didn’t work today?
f) How do I do what I would love more effectively and efficiently?
g) How did whatever I experienced today, whether positive or negative, serve me and my purpose?

Materialize what you would love

Be thankful for what you would love

Exercise 1 – create your own affirmations, and don’t stop saying them for two years before deciding whether they worked or not.

Exercise 2 – ask yourself: what are the seven highest-priority action steps I can do today that will help me live my mission or fulfill my purpose in life?

Passing the Torch – the quality of your life is directly proportionate to your feeling of productivity and to the service you bring to this world.

Illusions Also Serve – every once-believed truth eventually becomes another illusion on the next level of understanding.

The Truth about Therapists – he says that there are definitely therapists who are awakened, self-actualized beings, but there are others who support the victimhood of their patents, helping them weaken themselves.

Identity Crisis – “Growth demands this. You must go through some degree of an identity crisis to grow.”

Divine Perfection – our heart is wiser than our intellect, and we should listen to it – we already are perfection.

Napoleon Hill – “They won’t understand the drive and the depth of the motivation because they’re living from the suicide-survival-security-social level, instead of from the spiritual self-actualization perspective.”

Exercise – “Know this to be true: when you have love, you see love; when you live greatness, you’re surrounded by nothing but greatness; and every single human being has love and greatness inside them just waiting for the day it can come out and shine.”

Readers Reviews

I found this book to be very applicable to my life in many ways, particlarly with the affirmations. Dr. Demartini is an interesting author with a viewpoint that is refreshing and different than the cookbook approach repeated over and over in most personal development books. Well worth the time and investment.

I think you’ll enjoy this book more if you’ve seen Demartini at one of his speaking events. I also think reading this book will help you gain more from his talks. I don’t know which one should come first. Otherwise, the book does a great job of communicating his philosophy.